ClickUp guests and limited members are the two role families that decide how many seats a ClickUp Workspace pays for. ClickUp bills “member-type” roles per seat and treats most guests as free up to an allotment. The role a person holds, rather than the person’s login, is what the licence position depends on, and one person can change role simply by being given a permission.[2] The Terms of Service say that fees include “guest-types user roles or limited members”.[12]
Editions
User roles are available on every plan, with two exceptions. Permission controlled view only guests are not available on Free Forever, and custom roles are available only on Business Plus and Enterprise.[3]
| Role | Plan availability | Paid seat? |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | All plans | Yes |
| Admin | All plans | Yes |
| Member | All plans | Yes |
| Limited member | All plans | Yes, “the same subscription fee as members”[1] |
| Limited member view only (Chat collaborator) | All plans | No[2] |
| View only guest | All plans | No; unlimited on paid plans[1] |
| Permission controlled guest | Paid plans | Free within the allotment, otherwise a member seat[4] |
| Free Forever guest | Free Forever only | No; unlimited[5] |
| Custom role | Business Plus (one) and Enterprise (unlimited) | Not separately priced in the cited articles |
The member-type roles article says custom role permissions can be given to members on Business Plus plans and above.[2] The custom role article states: “One custom role is available on our Business Plus Plan” and “Unlimited custom role permissions are available on our Enterprise Plan.”[10] See Custom roles need Business Plus or Enterprise.
Metrics
Member-type seats
Owners, admins, members and limited members each use a Paid seat. Each Workspace can only have one owner.[2] By default members and admins have full edit permissions to all public locations and items. Limited members start with limited access: when a location or item is shared with them they can be given view only, comment, edit or full edit permissions to that location or item. Unlike guests, limited members can be invited to and create Spaces.[2]
Limited members view only
The free role for internal people is the limited member view only, also called a Chat collaborator. It has view only permissions to the locations and items it is invited to, and the Help Center presents it as a way to include someone who needs to collaborate in Chat without a paid seat.[2] The role converts to a paid one when the permissions change: “When a comment, edit, or full edit permission to a location or item is given, the user becomes a limited member, and a subscription fee is charged.” A limited member view only invited to a Team also becomes a limited member.[2] See Free view-only roles become paid when permissions are granted.
Guests
There are three guest types. On paid plans a view only guest is an external person who only views content, and a permission controlled guest is an external person who interacts with specific content. On Free Forever there is a single guest type that can only have full permissions.[1] Guests cannot be invited to a Space.[1] Permission controlled guests can be given view only, comment, edit or full edit permissions to an item or location. If permissions are given to a view only guest, the guest becomes permission controlled.[1] The pricing page says the same for Free Forever: “Guests must be given full access (no permissions)”.[5]
Counting / floors
The guest allotment
Each paid plan includes permission controlled guest seats. “For each member you invite, a permission controlled guest seat is added.”[4] The pricing FAQ states the ratios.[5]
| Plan | Guest seats for a one-member Workspace | Added per further paid user |
|---|---|---|
| Unlimited | 5 | 2 |
| Business | 10 | 5 |
| Business Plus | 10 | 5 |
| Enterprise | 10 | 5 |
The Help Center gives a worked example: on Unlimited, a Workspace with one owner has 5 permission controlled guest seats, and inviting one member raises the figure to 7.[4] By the same arithmetic a four-person Unlimited Workspace has 11 guest seats (5 plus 3 times 2), and a five-person Business Workspace has 30 (10 plus 4 times 5). See Guest seats grow with each member invited.
Overflow
When the allotment is used up, “a paid member seat is added.” ClickUp charges automatically for a new member seat when the Workspace has run out of guest seats and invites a permission controlled guest, or adds a view only or permission controlled guest to a Team. Adding a view only guest to a Team converts that guest to permission controlled.[4] The Workspace can reduce its guest count by setting an existing guest to view only, removing a view only guest from all Teams, or removing the guest.[4] See Excess permission controlled guests add a paid member seat.
The organisation test
Guest seats are for people outside the organisation. “People who use your organization’s email domain or SSO cannot be added as guests.” Permission-controlled guests who already meet that test are converted to the limited member role, which is charged as a member.[1] The pricing FAQ says that people added from inside the organisation “will be billed as paid users.”[5] A licence manager should therefore compare the guest list with the email domains in use, including subsidiaries and personal addresses used by employees. See Organisation email or SSO users cannot be guests.
Open seats and removals
Removing a member or limited member leaves the seat open. “If your Workspace has an open seat, you can fill it by adding a paid user or converting a limited member view only or guest to a paid role at no charge.”[2] If no one is assigned the seat before the next billing cycle begins, it is removed.[11] Removing a person is described as permanent and cannot be undone; private items of a deactivated user are deleted, while public items remain with a Deactivated label.[11]
Virtualization & partitioning
Not applicable. The partition is the Workspace: seats and guest allotments are counted within each Workspace, and each Workspace is upgraded and billed on its own.[4] Because the plan applies to every member of one Workspace, it is not possible to place some users of that Workspace on a cheaper plan.
Cloud / BYOL
There is no BYOL. For role-based entitlements the Help Center adds several limits to the free and low-privilege roles, summarised here because they affect whether a free role is workable:
- Chat. All user roles can use Chat once an owner or admin activates the ClickApp. Guests cannot create Channels, and view only guests cannot send messages in Channels. Free Forever Workspaces are limited to 1,000 messages shared across the Workspace.[6]
- AI. Free Forever guests, view only guests, permission controlled guests, limited members view only and limited members cannot use @Brain or the Brain MAX desktop app, and “cannot see Super Agents profiles or create or trigger a Super Agent”. Members, admins and owners can.[7] See Guests and limited members cannot use Super Agents.
- Automations. Free Forever guests, view only guests, permission controlled guests and limited members view only cannot create Automations; limited members can in locations where they have edit or full edit permission.[8]
- API. “Limited members with view-only permissions cannot access or manage the API”; members and limited members with full edit permissions can use personal API tokens.[9]
Programs
No program is specific to guests. The two commercial constructs that touch them are the plan-level allotment above and the Free Forever plan, whose “unlimited number of members and guests at no charge” is part of its definition.[5] Guests on Free Forever receive full create and edit permissions that cannot be modified, so a Free Forever Workspace cannot restrict a guest to viewing.[5] See Free Forever guests have full permissions at no charge.
Audits and compliance
The Workspace’s Manage people settings track the users in the Workspace, their information and their activity.[1] Guests are identified by a square at the upper right of their avatar and members by a circle at the lower right.[1] The public Terms contain no audit clause, so these screens and the billing page are the evidence a licensee holds. An internal check should cover four things: guests with an organisation email domain; limited members view only who have since been given comment or edit rights; open seats that will lapse at the next cycle; and whether Teams contain guests, since adding a guest to a Team can consume a member seat.
Out of scope
This article does not cover the permission model inside Spaces and Lists, Enterprise SCIM provisioning (invites through the API or SCIM provisioning are on the Enterprise plan only[2]), or the per-role behaviour of every ClickApp. It also does not cover add-on pricing, which is per Workspace member and described in ClickUp Brain AI and AI Credits.